163: How to ACTUALLY recover from a hypo

0:00This is the Empowering Health Podcast. If you're a female living with type 1 diabetes and you care about your health, you're in the right place. I'm your host Andy Balog and I specialise in helping you men just like you never get all themes nutrition, exercise, sleep and blood sugars so you can feel confident and in control in your body and your life with T1D. Let's go. Welcome back to the Empowering Type 1 Diabetes podcast. With type 1 diabetes, we talk on and on about all of the different aspects that life with type 1 involves, right? We talk about hypos and how stressful they are and how we have so much anxiety because of hypos, how they make us feel so drained and they make us feel awful. We talk about the same thing with high blood sugars, how they affect our ability to focus, how we feel tired, how no one around us

1:02understands what it is. It's all about how terrible type 1 diabetes is and all of the aspects that go with it. But there's so much missing, there are so many gaps in the actual understanding and I guess support but also education that we as type 1 diabetes receive or have available to us that actually help us manage it better, that actually help us feel better on a daily basis, that help us, for example, recover from hypos faster, better so that we are actually a more healthy overall human being that is more resilient and able to live life with more energy and less anxiety and overall just happier and healthier. So in today's podcast episode, I'm going to zoom in with you and let's talk about how to actually recover from a hypere. I'm going to talk about five things that we can and should be doing and considering when it comes to how do we actually

2:08recover from having multiple hypos and regular hypos all the time. Now obviously this kind of goes without saying on this podcast, you probably have heard this before if you've listened to multiple episodes but if you're new around here, I like to preface all the episodes just in case you happen to drop into this podcast from some random link somewhere on the internet and you haven't listened to any other episodes before or maybe you're just still new around here and you're learning how things are but the reality is that when we're talking about having regular hypos, if you're someone who has a hyper every single day, multiple hypos a day, maybe it's multiple hypos a week and there's some kind of pattern to it where you're having them all the time. Maybe you haven't even noticed there's a pattern but a lot of the time there is but if you're having multiple hypos a week where you can't even tell me about a week that you didn't have a hyper and it just feels like every single day is a blur because you're just having hypos all the damn time. Then that means that you definitely have some work to do in terms of insulin dosages. We can't put band-aids

3:16over the top of that and hope that it's going to fix a situation. You can't fix having regular hypos with any of the things I'm going to say except for one of them which I believe is number five but all the other ones it doesn't really matter what you do. The main thing you need to focus on if you're having hypos all the time is insulin adjustment so we need to fix that because that's the actual cause of the lows but this podcast episode is about how to recover from them when they do happen. So when we're having a hyper the things that happen in our body are very important to be aware of. So we're having things like nervous system fatigue. Our nervous system is impacted when we have hypos. It's tiring on your entire body, on your brain. Our liver glycogen gets depleted because it

4:16has tried to help us recover from that hyper in the first place but it doesn't really work the best way when we have type one as well because a lot of those systems are also impacted when you have a pancreas that is no longer producing insulin. Some of those other things that come along with it is the inability to release glycogen appropriately. We have an increase insulin sensitivity which means you're more likely to go low when you already have gone low. You're probably going to sleep really badly that night. It could be just because you're anxious about having lows and you're worried you're going to go low again. But when you have a low your body releases adrenaline as well which if you've ever been in like a car crash or a really really stressful situation even like when you've been on a roller coaster. Your body releases adrenaline and that puts you on that high. It's very hard to wind down from that especially if you've had multiple lows and lows that are close to bed especially. So it's going to impact your sleep for sure to some degree if not a lot and then obviously there's a potential for rebound highs which happens a lot of the time especially

5:19because hand in hand with a lot of the other gaps in knowledge that we have as type one diabetics or parents of type one kids is the knowledge of treating hypos appropriately and there's a lot of generalized advice that we're given about how to treat hypos and it can really let us down in terms of causing potential rebound highs as well. So you're dealing with a lot of these things and this is probably just a very concise list of that I've kind of thrown together but these are some of the main things that you're going to be dealing with. So because of all of this these are the five things that I would focus in on to help you recover from hypos better. Obviously this is not medical advice it's just what I do myself and what I recommend to others who struggle with the same things that I've just listed out and it's all based in research that I've done on my own okay so take that with a grain of salt but you can look all this up and I'm pretty sure you're not going to

6:23find anything that's you know too left of center here it's nothing crazy okay it's just things that we don't really think about a lot of the time so number one would be to prioritize sleep this is obvious but it's also something that we skip past because we don't think it's that big of a deal or it's not going to make that much of a difference that's total bull crap of course it's going to make a big difference sleep is one of the biggest recovery tools and best tools that we've got it's honestly the best because we need sleep it's like a non-negotiable if you don't get sleep your body will put you to sleep at some point because you have not had sleep so it's like something that your body cannot do without in there have been studies you can look them up where they used lack of sleep and not allowing people to sleep as a torture form and they do that they did that in prisons and things like that so you can look those up it's pretty pretty scary and creepy but that's how important sleep is okay and yes even being slightly depleted of sleep is still

7:29going to be impactful in a negative way you don't have to completely deprive yourself of sleep so if you can prioritize sleep especially on the days when you've had multiple hypos but just in general with type one you're going to feel so much better like we do not give ourselves enough time for sleep and we don't give it enough credit in our ability to be healthier and feel better on a daily basis and when you have all of those things we just spoke about working against you you want to help your body in the best way possible and sleep is how you do that so you're going to want extra sleep so think of it like ladies listening if you're on your period you kind of feel more tired at certain times of the month if you can then have more sleep it's going to help you in those times as well the same way this works if you can get yourself to bed an hour two hours earlier by the time you fall asleep you should be able to recover better the next day and to be

8:33able to do this it does take a bit of effort you can't just expect yourself to just fall asleep at the drop of a heart and that's what a lot of us do we turn off our devices finally when we're in bed about to want to go to sleep and then we wonder why we can't fall asleep quickly well your brain and your body take time to release hormones that will not be released if you're staring into your screen into your phone that is bright light bright blue light that is going to impact your ability to release the hormones that you require to fall asleep and this is why it's super important to get your room and your environment ready for sleep so making sure it's not too hot wherever you are making sure that you are in a room where it's not too bright you can turn off all of the devices all the lights ideally candle light is best red light is great as well but that's not you know necessary you also want to make sure that you're not eating right before bed

9:34so your body's trying to digest when you're trying to fall asleep I've spoken about sleep a lot more detail in previous episodes I'm not going to take up more time on this episode but please go back and search my podcast for episodes about how to improve your sleep and things like that and you'll find four episodes on that so we need to prioritize sleep your nervous system needs that recovery and it's stressful to constantly be low so that's the first thing prioritising sleep number two for recovering faster and better from hypos is eating proper meals so the day after you're having a ton of hypos you better be focusing on your meals being really really wholesome and healthy and this should always be the goal obviously but it's even more important the next day so you want to be eating regularly you want to make sure that you've got a mix of carbs in there some proteins some fats and heavy on the proteins and fats but carbs are good as well okay because

10:35we're going to want to replenish our glycogen stores in our liver we want to not be restricting food we want to make sure that we are giving our bodies a good amount of nutrition that it can use to help us recover and feel energized because it's going to take time okay like I said your body is not an on-off switch you need to give it time and the right ingredients which in this case would be you know the right macronutrients you want carbohydrates fats protein fiber all of those things that we tell people to have when they're like on a lifestyle health journey or weight loss journey or whatever it is but that's actually important for every day feeling good it's not about weight or you know detoxing or some crap like that it's about giving your body what it needs so that you can actually recover and feel good and not wake up feeling like you've been hit by truck all the time and not have brain fog all the time and something that goes hand in hand with

11:39that so that was number two which is to eat proper meals and eat regularly eat wholesome meals number three would be to hydrate this is so important and I don't just mean drink a shit ton of you need to be having electrolytes because when you have a big drop of adrenaline which is what we were saying happens when you have lows it increases the fluid shifts in your body as if you treated lows with juice or any kind of sugar repeatedly you're going to usually be slightly dehydrated and if on top of that you're already not really someone who takes care of how much water they're drinking and how many electrolytes they're having every day if you're not if you eat quite healthy as well a lot of people who have type one do eat very healthy and they don't eat processed foods but then what happens is they're not putting enough salt in their food because they're not compensating for the fact that they're eating all natural foods and we need a lot of salt actually we actually need a lot of salt in our diet but when you're eating processed foods that amount of

12:43salt in processed foods is like over the top so when you cut out processed foods you then are usually depleted in salt and electrolytes so we definitely need sodium and electrolytes to help restore balance and feeling like we're human again I don't know if you've ever had gastro or anything like that but I can tell you from experience you will feel like a different person when you are fully dehydrated compared to when you're not and you might not even realize a lot of the time people are walking around dehydrated all the time and no one even realizes like they don't realize but it makes you feel so depleted and tired and like your limbs are heavy and kind of like you always got high blood sugar in a way just flat just overall tired and lifeless that usually means you're dehydrated so that's number three hydrating and giving yourself the opportunity to recover with electrolytes and sodium okay so that could be something like a pinch of salt

13:47in every single glass of water you drink that next day you can even use something like hydrolyte but I still usually would add a little bit of extra salt with a couple of hydrolyte especially when you're trying to recover from multiple hypos the day before. Number four on the list today is really important as well this is for those of you who are exercising regularly and you're lifting in the gym you are working out your lifting weights and even if you're just a runner maybe you are religious with your running any kind of regular high intensity exercise we need to back off of that a little bit let's give ourselves a bit of time the next day to kind of recover and focus on just replenishing again all of our glycogen stores in our muscles I'm not saying don't move and lean the bed and rot all day definitely don't do that definitely just walk light movements great like mobility yoga things like that and again like we're talking about recovering from hypos we're not even talking about how do we stop them from

14:51happening all the time in the first place because I don't want you to to not ever be working our or working out at a high intensity and always be doing yoga and walking instead of proper exercise because you're always having hypos like if that's happening we need to go back to square one and improve our insulin management and adjust anything that needs adjusting but this is just talking about what to do if you did have hypos or did have multiple hypos or you had really bad hypos the day before the next day give yourself time to recover focus on just slowing things down and just giving your body time to rest and again if you need to take another nap the next day have a bath with some magnesium salts in it like recovery okay take it easy that will help a lot to just feel better and feel better faster and the last one today which probably should have been the first one none of these are in order of importance by the way they're probably kind of backwards in a way number five is the one we've been talking about this whole time in and out

15:54is adjusting our insulin proactively if you're finding that you're having regular lows like I said before whether that's regular every single day whether that's weekly at the same times whether that's monthly or it's just multiple in a week or a day or a month or whatever we should not be considering lows to be just a normal part of type one it's a common part of type one but it doesn't have to be what we accept as the norm okay because you can definitely stop having hypos all the damn time it's just about knowing how to manage your insulin correctly to avoid that from happening because that is not the go we do not want that to be happening all the time that is not healthy for your body your brain anything like that okay so for all the reasons we just mentioned before but it's just not a healthy way to live okay even if you have type one it doesn't mean we have to accept that because it's just not true all right so we need to in terms of improving the way that we

16:59manage our insulin it could be basal related so that could be long acting basal depending on if you're on a pump or insulin injections but what we're talking about is have you done basal testing have you gone back to the basics of checking whether your insulin dosages are correct for you in your basals and then it could be something like your car ratios or your correction factors as well which comes after basal testing so I have a basal basic guide that you can download and read through and give yourself a basic understanding of how to basal test because this is just based knowledge that everyone with type one or a parent of type one child needs to know should know but a lot of the time it just gets missed in the fog of all the other information that we're supposed to be learning so you can go and check that out in the links below and if you find that you've done all of that and you still need help with understanding the patterns that are going on for you and figuring out where are all of these lows happening all the time why are they happening all the time that is

18:02something that I help my clients walk through in one-on-one sessions we can look through your CGM graphs together and we find patterns that could be leading to your lows your highs and we figure out how to actually change that pattern and that could be something like implementing changes to your routine it can be changes to the strategies that you're using the way that you're dosing insulin all of these different things maybe it's just a gap in understanding or knowledge or something to do with when you're eating how much you're eating all of these different things could be going on and that's something that I can help you with in one-on-one coaching but the best place to start is basal basics guard and then if you need more help we can always work together as well but that is the five things that I'll be focusing on the most in order to recover from hypers better faster with less brain fog with less anxiety and with less just exhaustion and those are just going

19:08back to them is prioritising sleep we also want to eat properly and make sure we're eating proper food that our body can use to recover with we want to hydrate and make sure that we're having enough electrolytes sodium in our water every single day and reducing the amount of high intensity exercise we're doing for the day after at least so that we can actually give our liver a chance to replenish blackage and stores and then we want to make sure that our insulin is dosed correctly for what we actually need and we're not having too much insulin because if we're having too much insulin you're going to keep going low that is just the short of it okay so I hope that this episode helps and actually helps you feel some gaps and feel like you can actually do something about all of these lows because you don't have to accept it like we said and I hope that you enjoyed this episode all right I'll talk to you in the next one but if you enjoyed this I'd love

20:08for you to share it with a type one friend or someone that you know or you can just leave a review and help others in podcast land find this because guess what someone could be searching for what to do to recover from a hypo they could be searching for that right now and if you leave a review it's more likely to show them this episode so if you find it helpful help a friend out all right I will talk to you soon bye if this podcast has inspired you and you're ready for change you can apply to work with me by clicking the link in the show notes or go to empoweringhealth.com daily you and click apply for coaching if you like this episode please leave a five star review and share it with other T1Ds you know so I can continue to help others you can also find me on Instagram at the T1D nutritionist and I'll catch you in the next episode the empowering health podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine or other diabetes health care services I am not a doctor or a diabetes educator and this is not medical advice the use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is

21:10at the user's own risk the content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice diagnosis or treatment users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions for any such conditions